Quickstart for the Jabber server

Getting Started

  • Log on to your Jabber account (see this Quickstart guide)
    • You can use your gmail account as a Jabber login!
  • Add daniel to your roster
  • He will invite you to the chat rooms

Joining a chat room

To get into the rooms, there are two possibilities:

  • If your client supports service discovery, the you can just browse the list of rooms on conference.jabber.talia.discovery-project.eu
  • If not (e.g. Adium X), then you need to type in the room name manually, together with the Talia server address

Server address

  • Conferencing server: conference.jabber.talia.discovery-project.eu

Details you never wanted to know

Features of the server

  • The chat rooms will stay permanently (even if no one is there, like Campfire)
  • The history of the chat will also stay (until a reboot of the Jabber server)
  • The history will also be logged to HTML pages, which will be on the web soon
  • You can invite other Jabber users to the chat roomso

Not allowed

  • You cannot create a Jabber Id on the talia server - a public service will give you a more permanent one
  • You can only enter a room after you were invited (everyone can invite users)
  • Normal users cannot create new chat rooms

Clients

There is a whole load of Jabber clients (look at the list) and almost all are free. You can use any that supports group chat (MUC). However, here are some that I tested for groupchatting:

  • Spark - cross platform, very clean and easy interface, very good group chat support. If you don't have a favourite, you can try this first. (It also seems to support other IM systems, but I didn't try).
    • There are problems with Spark now: It will not use conference rooms correctly if you use the amessage.* servicei
    • Another issue: Logging in with Gmail credentials doesn't work currently!
  • Coccinella - cross platform and integrated whiteboard, which could be useful. Very powerful groupchat features, but still looks a bit beta.
  • PSI - Cross-platform, very popular. However, groupchat support is limited (you can just browse servers and have very basic bookmarks for the rooms)
  • AdiumX - Included because it's something like a standard on the Mac. However, the conference support is very basic - you have to enter the server and room name every time. (Maybe a script could help)
  • TkAbber - Didn't try, because it's windows and linux only. This seem the one Jabber client with the most features ever.
  • There are tons of other (for windows you could try Exodus, for Linux also Kopete or Gaim...)

Jabber services

This is just a quick selection of public jabber services. To make an account you will just need to give a username and password - that's all. (here's the list of servers)

  • If you use Google: You can use Google Talk, which is a Jabber service. You can log on to this with your Gmail account''' (Just use your gmail name and "gamil.com" as a server (some clients will require the form name@… instead)
  • jabber.org: Something like the "default" server
  • amessage.info: also a very reliable service
  • The Gizmo project Voip service (something like a skype clone) also includes a Jabber service